Park board hears discussion of issues presenters say misunderstood

The Hill County Park Board heard a brief update on environmental monitoring in Beaver Creek Park during their monthly meeting Monday, where they also heard from Hill County Conservation District Administrator Emma Korntheuer, who cleared up a number of misconceptions about an upcoming watershed assessment and grants it could be used to pursue.

In previous meetings members of the park board declined to participate in or support the assessment over concerns that doing so would give the state the opportunity to take away local control of the park and dictate their practices, something board member Lou Hagener, who was advocating participation in the assessment, said was a significant exaggeration.

Korntheuer said reading coverage in the Havre Daily News of ongoing discussions surrounding her organization's upcoming watershed assessment made it clear that a number of clarifications needed to be made to the board.

She said the assessment is not being done by the state, but by the Hill County Conservation District, which aims to protect and preserve the area's natural resources and is overseen mainly by elected stakeholders.

She said they do an assessment like this every 15 to 20 years, and it has been 24 years since their last one.

Previous assessments have provided useful data about things like trout habitats, in addition to the nutrient levels and stream morphology.

She said they are working on a sampling analysis plan for this assessment after which they will examine their findings and put together a report about the state of the watershed and what can be done to improve its health.

Korntheuer said this report can be used to leverage funding for various projects, not just from the state, but from private organizations as well.

She said she has previously brought in opportunities for state grants that could be used for projects on the park, and the response has been very jarring considering their potential value.

During the meeting Hagener also presented a comprehensive report on the park's vegetation, the condition of the water table and more, but was limited to five minutes which he said was far too short to discuss the report in any useful detail.

Hagener's report was listed in the agenda as being limited to five minutes, an unorthodox restriction on such a presentation.

Hagener, a retired rangeland management specialist, said the report covers 31 individual studies that cover quantitative and qualitative observations about various plant communities and the trends of growth, reduction and change that have been observed.

He said some trends are positive and some were negative, and careful attention should be paid to the ratios of native plantlife to introduced or invasive plant life, as reductions in the former category can be a serious environmental issue.

He said attention should also be paid to the data collected about water quality in the park.

Hagener said their current program of park monitoring has a significant deficiency in terms of evaluating the causes of environmental changes in the park.

Some factors that contribute to environmental change are out of the board and park management's control, including the weather and changing climate, but there are plenty of things they can control, like grazing, infrastructure construction, maintenance and use, and general land management.

He said these things have an effect on the long-term health of the park and need to be examined in more detail.

With the last minute of his time Hagener criticized the time limit that had been placed on discussion of the report, which he said is the result of hundreds of hours of work and thousands of miles driven by himself, the Hill County Conservation District and Montana State University-Northern Biology Professor Terri Hildebrand.

He said it is an insult to the efforts they've made to provide the park with evidence-based records and assessments of the park's resources and ecology.

"It appears telling of the attitude of the board regarding the health and long-term economic, and ecological value of our park," he said.

Board Chair Jeff Jensen responded to this criticism by saying he isn't against the work Hagener does, but the park already has Park Manager Chad Edgar and the board's grazing committee to monitor the park, and all future reports like this will go to that committee, not the board, from now on.

Hagener has repeatedly criticized the board for not considering the long-term ecological health of the park when making decisions about grazing on the park, and has been among many that have raised concerns that members of the committee itself have conflict of interest, as they or their families run cattle on the park and directly benefit from the decisions of that committee.

Indeed, later in Monday's meeting Hill County Commissioner and Park Board member Mark Peterson announced new members of the committee, many of whom Hagener said have conflicts of interest.

In the past few years many, including members of the park board have raised concerns about said conflicts of interest and that the makeup of the committee is primarily grazers, instead of a more diverse group of stakeholders, which they say violates policy.

Peterson responded to Hagener's comment at Monday's meeting, saying they made the best decisions they could based on the group of people who applied.

Hagener didn't disagree but maintained that the issue remains regardless.

During the meeting Jensen also gave an update on efforts to replace the Camp Kiwanis Beaver Lodge, saying that the initial designs are finished and have been sent to contractors who will give them price estimates.

Edgar said the Friends of Beaver Creek Park have been looking at more funding methods for the project.

The board also heard from Matt Wertheimer of the Havre Area Chamber of Commerce, who asked for the board's blessing to run this year's Bear Paw Marathon on the park.

Wertheimer said the route will be the same as last year and they, as always, commit to leaving the park in a better condition than they found it.

He said they have already signed up 78 participants from eight states and three Canadian provinces.

Peterson said the marathon is extremely well organized and always makes good on their promise to leave the park clean, so he sees no reason not to support it.

The board unanimously granted the event their blessing.

The board also heard an update on park conditions from Edgar who said they have had a lot of ice fishing going on and have been making improvements to the office.

As for next month's meeting, Hagener said they should get going on establishing new grazing fees so grazers have time to plan accordingly.